Merging reality and the ideal through consumption.

Abstract

Consumerism is undeniably a large part of post-modern society due to the notion that identity is very much determined by the objects that one possesses. Using Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero and Don Delillo’s White Noise, this paper attempts to deconstruct this identity-object relationship in order to argue that rather than the material object, it is the image that the consumer desires because it creates, recreates and, most importantly, asserts the self. However, the images that consumer society aggressively promotes through advertising are only an ideal that the consumer desires to have merged with his or her reality or true self. As the words ‘ideal’ and ‘reality’ themselves suggest, the two concepts can only exist as separates. Instead of simply criticizing consumption as an act that propagates consumer disillusionment, I will propose the idea that it is only mandatory for the gap that exists between the desired identity and the real self to remain since it allows consumers to avoid a state of stasis. Even though consumption keeps on driving consumers towards an unreachable goal, such a fate is better than having no more ideal to move towards when the ideal is realised.